The Mind's Role in Weight Loss: Natalie Jill Interviews John Assaraf

Hi, guys. Natalie, Jill here. I am so excited today because I am with John Assaraf. And for those of you that don't know him, I mean, this is. I'm just beside myself that I get to sit here interviewing him today because he is. When I think of mindset, he is mindset guru, truly mindset guru. He is the CEO of NeuroGym, and he is somebody that I have admired from afar. And I was so fortunate to learn that he lives in San Diego. And I got to sit down recently and talk with him and. And I thought I have to interview him so you all could see what I see talking to you, because I think that's incredible. So thank you for being here.

Oh, I love it.

And I wanted to share a little story for us. And I recently told you this, but this is just crazy to me that when I was going through my rock bottom years ago, and many of you that have followed me for a while have heard me share this story. But what turned my life around initially was making a vision board.

And.

And the whole reason I had the idea to make the vision board is from reading and watching the Secret years ago.

The Secret.

And I remember that scene so clearly when you were in the house with your son and you pulled out the vision board and you said, this is amazing. This is what I created years ago. And now I'm living this even you were living in the exact house you had put on the vision board.

That's right.

And I remember that. And that was such a turning point for me because that's when I knew that I had to start things with vision and a mind. So I was so excited. I'm kind of geeking out about the whole meeting with you now.

Me too.

What I wanted to ask you, and he wouldn't let me ask this before I was on camera, was, what's the negative on a vision board?

Ah, the negative on a vision board. Well, hey, everybody, number one is a lot of people think that by writing your vision and looking at it, then somehow it's magically going to happen. And the good news is when you take a vision or an image and you focus on it daily, you're actually priming your brain. You're giving your brain the focus on what you want it to focus on as opposed to what you don't want to have happen or focus on. But the negative side of that is if you look at an image for a week, for two weeks, for a month, three months, six months, nine months, 12 months, and it doesn't happen A lot of people start to feel like, well, this isn't working and they give up hope and they start to be disappointed. And when people don't achieve their goals and dreams, a lot of times they don't understand. There are other things that have to be in alignment in order for the universe to be in alignment with you, but also in order for your neurology, biology, physiology and psychology to be together to be able to achieve the goals and dreams. So vision boards can act as great motivators, but they can also act as demotivators for a lot of people that don't achieve their goals and dreams right away.

Interesting. I never looked at it like that, but that's a really good point. See, I told you. Mind guru. How did this whole fascination with the mind start with you?

Many years ago, I had a company of 1500 real estate agents, and I would give them the best books, CDs, coaches, consultants, seminars, events. And some of the individuals in my company would take that information and apply it and achieve amazing results. But that was about 5% of the people, 95% would say, wow, that was great information. You know, you gave me the blueprints, you gave me the strategies, the tactics. I'm excited, I'm motivated, and they wouldn't do anything. And so I was thinking to myself, I was investing at the time about a quarter of a million dollars a year in training my company employees. And some were achieving success and some weren't. So I had to take responsibility for both of them. And so I started to research what actually causes somebody to have a goal, whether it's a weight goal, financial goal, a lifestyle goal, and, and then do everything possible to achieve it and sustain it. And then what is actually happening in the mind between somebody who is maybe starting and stopping, procrastinating, having doubts, fears, anxieties, starting and then continuing and then stopping. So I got fascinated with what are the neurological. What's happening with people's brains that is causing that to happen? When somebody has this goal that they want to achieve, but they're either not doing what they should be doing, or they're doing it and then sabotaging their success by doing the polar opposite.

Wow. So I love that whole thought process because most people don't even go down that road with that. So tell me, how would that tie into weight loss struggle? Because that's something I deal with with my audience all the time.

That constant weight loss struggle, the yo, yo, the up and down, how would that play a role?

Well, first and foremost, everybody's Heard of the conscious and the unconscious mind or subconscious mind. And our conscious brain is responsible for setting a goal of what we want our body to look like, what we want our energy level to feel like, what we want. You know, the type of jeans we want to fit into or clothes we want to fit into. And that is great as far as setting goals. But what we've discovered through a lot of the neuroscience research is it's your unconscious implicit memory system where all of your habits, perceptions about yourself reside, that actually is responsible for what causes you to take action past the week or two weeks or three week mark. And if you have a goal for, let's say, releasing, I prefer to call it releasing over losing weight. Releasing, let's say 25 or 50 pounds or 75 pounds. And that is your conscious vision. But your unconscious brain doesn't feel like you're worthy of having that ideal body, doesn't feel like you deserve to, doesn't feel like you know how to. Then you're gonna start feeling doubts and fears and anxieties, which triggers all of the old patterns and behaviors to stay in your comfort zone. So I've been fascinated with how do you get alignment between the goals and the dreams that you have and what you are unconsciously programmed to think, feel and do.

Yeah, and that's pretty incredible because I have always noticed that somebody that was once healthy and fit and in shape and has fallen off track, they find it easier to get back because I think they were once there. But the ones that have never experienced it, it's like something's holding them back constantly. And it sounds like it's a lot of what you're talking about.

Well, when we're talking about habits, we're talking about neural patterns in the brain. And even if you've been in shape in the past and have been healthy in the past, and you get out of shape, the neural memory is there that as soon as you start getting active again, you start to think and feel and act the way you used to, it's much easier for that person. And that person already has a neural networker pattern that they could rebuild upon. And that's cellular memory. The other person who hasn't ever been healthy or in shape, they're actually building a brand new neural structure. And we know from all of the latest research that it takes between 66 and 210 days to build a pattern that becomes strong enough to become automatic and easy to do. What do most people do when they go on diets or engage in exercise programs? They Start on for a week or two or three. They use one willpower and persistence. And then what does their brain do? It starts to get them to rationalize. How it starts to have them tell themselves rational lies. Well, I don't have to exercise today. I could take today or tomorrow off. Instead of eating this, I'm going to go back to my old eating pattern for two or three or four days and I'll come back to it. And this is a vicious cycle that people recognize through just the words yo yo dieting, yo yo exercises, starting and stopping. And what we know about the brain, there's something called LIFO L I F O which is last in, first out. What does that mean?

The newest pattern that you start is the first pattern your brain wants to give up on. So the last pattern in which is the newest one is going to be the first one that your brain says, that's too much work. I don't want to focus on that because it requires energy. And our brain is an energy conservation tool. So if it takes conscious effort beyond our willpower and persistence, we'll just go back to the path of least resistance. Which is what? Going back to all of our old.

Patterns, that comfort zone.

And that's why people go on a diet for. I usually say people go on a diet for three weeks and usually they've lost 21 days. And what I mean by that is they lose the weight, then they gain it all back, or they start the exercise program, then they lose all the benefits. Not because they don't want to, not because they're not capable of it. It's because they haven't aligned their unconscious neural patterns with their conscious decision making and imagination and goal patterns in their conscious mind. And that causes something called neural dissonance in people's brain. Oh my gosh.

I have so many questions now and I'm sure everybody listening has a bunch of questions and I want to make sure I get through them all. Okay. I don't want to get too off track, but I know you've mentioned before a weight set point. Can you explain that and how that this all ties in with this?

Sure. A weight set point is very, very similar to a thermostat in your car or a thermostat in your home. Let's say when you set the thermostat, let's say at 70 degrees for your comfort zone, there's a sensor in the thermostat that picks up whether it's too hot or too cold in the room and it sends a signal through the electrical system to turn up the heat or the air conditioning. That's called a cybernetic mechanism. Simple, just a control and response mechanism. Well, human beings have what we call a psycho cybernetic mechanism. So anytime you are heavier than you want to be or should be, or your comfort zone is, or lower than what your comfort zone is, an electrical signal sent through your system to either eat more and exercise less, if you've lost weight, or if you've gained more weight than what your comfort zone is, your weight set point is, then you'll go on a diet. And we go on these diets to lose weight, or we go on these eating binges to gain weight until we hit this weight set point, which is programmed in your subconscious mind. So if you want to release weight and keep it on, off, if you just use an exercise program or a diet without resetting your weight set point, the point that you've gotten accustomed to and comfortable with, you will go through these yo yo diets and periods of up and down fluctuations until the cows come home.

Oh my gosh. So we have to fix that first.

You gotta fix that first. It's just like if you want the temperature to change in the room you're in, you'd have to reset the thermostat.

Okay, and I've got to know how to do this, but you mentioned it. You coined a term before, disappointment avoidance. What does that mean?

Whenever we have attempted something over and over and over again, a couple things start to happen. We become aware that we've tried and failed, tried and failed, tried and failed and disappointed ourselves or other people who are close to us. As children, we are taught to avoid disappointment. First of our parents, our teachers, our siblings. And then we start to feel the effects of that disappointment, Usually in the form of embarrassment, being ashamed, and then feeling guilty. So whenever we have a goal, let's say, of releasing weight and being at our ideal weight, and we have the memory of previous attempts where we've disappointed the people we've told were going to lose weight, disappointed ourselves again on one more diet, on one more investment, there's a part of the brain that activates and actually shuts down the motivational center in the brain. So when the motivational center in the brain shuts down, guess what we do? We go back to what's comfortable and familiar so that we avoid the disappointment factor of ourselves one more time or other people.

So that's explaining why we get into those comfort zones.

Absolutely.

But we all can agree that comfort zones are not where you're going to change. It's not what's going to change anything.

No comfort zone is going to keep you in your comfort zone. You could be miserable and comfortable. If you think about lottery winners, why do lottery winners, 85 to 90% of them who win the lottery, they buy tickets because they want to win millions. They win millions, then they lose all the money. That is their financial set point. It's the exact same reason people who lose weight gain it back over and over and over and over again. Because they haven't aligned their internal self image and weight set point with the new lifestyle, the new image and the way that they want to see themselves and accepted that at the conscious and unconscious level.

This is fascinating. It's a whole other way to look at this. What are some triggers you mentioned, triggers that keep us from losing weight? What are those?

So every one of us, we have people in our lives that when they say or do something, it does something within us. And a lot of people use food as a way to comfort themselves. So we get stressed out. Guess what? We go to food. People get us upset, we go to food. Things don't work out at work, we go to food. People are in these environments. In a lot of cases, that causes them to create an intrinsic, an internal trigger that the response, the automatic response for a lot of people is overeat, binge, eat or eat the wrong foods. And that is just a strategy that we've used to reduce the stress of these triggers to activate the pleasure center of the brain. Well, it works as a strategy, but it works against the goal that we want to have. And what people, number one, need to do is understand that every one of us has triggers. Everybody has triggers. The key is what do you do when you are triggered? First you have to recognize the people, the situations, the environments that trigger you to want to binge, eat, overeat or eat the wrong food. So first you've got to recognize it, then you've got to retrain your brain to behave a different way versus using.

Food, which is very different than for what people usually do because they never retrain. They just beat themselves up about it. They give in and then they beat themselves up about it.

That's right. And then they create this cycle and what he calls a self fulfilling doom cycle. So the trigger happens. They behave the way they used to behave. They feel guilty about it, which creates more stress, which creates more of a feeling of embarrassment, shame or guilt, which causes an emotion that they think about. Then they think about what they're Feeling they feel, what they think about, and that perpetuates more of the same behavior. And what all the latest neuroscience and neuropsychology is showing us is we have to, yes, set a vision, a goal for what we want. We need to learn what is the right exercise program and nutritional program that we have to be on a life plan. And then we have to learn how to recognize those triggers, reset our weight set point and eliminate the destructive patterns that are moving us away from our goal while we create new patterns to move us towards the goal.

So we need to win the game of weight loss.

Absolutely.

So how do we do that? How do we win this game?

Well, the first thing is you've got to rescript and reshape your internal self image. If you think about why do people behave a certain way, why do people act a certain way? Well, because it's consistent with their identity. So somebody who's 25 or 50 or 75 pounds overweight, that has become their identity. Whether they like it or not, it's a whole other story. But that's who they've become at an unconscious level. And then all of their behaviors have got to match to maintain their identity. Anytime that they're out, out of congruency with their identity, they will sabotage that until they match their identity. So by reshaping and rescripting your hidden self image, that's step one. Step number two is to recognize what are my triggers when I'm stressed, What do I do when I'm in the environment of people that are just getting under my skin, what do I do? And then you can shift that. And then the third part is to reset and recalibrate your weight set point, your weight set point for here is how I'm going to recalibrate that. And there are evidence based methodologies that people can use. So for example, we talked about a vision board when we started earlier. If you had a vision board of the ideal weight that you want it to be, that what I recommend is instead of going from let's say being 50 pounds overweight to your ideal weight, why not create a vision board that has 50, 50 pounds overweight, 40 pounds overweight, 30, 20, 10 and 0. So you can actually train your brain to see yourself going through what I call is fractional goal achievement that it will believe versus it, creating this fear response that will cause you to go, I could never lose £50. But could you lose five?

That's amazing.

Could you lose 10? Yeah, the brain can grab. So we've come up with a variety of methodologies and technology to help people see their way through rescripting and reshaping their internal self image.

So I clearly want more. I need to know more and I know everyone listening wants more. Where can we get more? Where can we get more?

More and more and more. I'm doing a virtual training session for about three hours where if you like what I've shared, right now I've got myself and several other experts that have come together to really bring you the neuroscience and neuropsychology of releasing the weight you want off, but more importantly keeping it off by really creating the alignment on the inside so that all of your goals and dreams you will follow through on and stick to. And so all they need to do. I think we're gonna have some information.

Down below and can anyone can do this?

Yeah, it's totally for free.

Oh, for free. Even better.

Free. Free. Free is a great word. Free. Amazing.

Okay, so all the information linked below. I'm definitely taking this because I need to know where this is going. I have so many more questions. This is great. Thank you. A whole other way of looking at things and I hope you'll do this. I'm going to do it too. Go to the link below. We're going to have information on where to get this awesome virtual training for free. How great is that? So we can start to shift our mindset on this.

If you win the inner game, you will absolutely win the outer game of your weight release program.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.